We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
The release posted on Kakuhidou’s website for this year’s anti-Valentines parade says “the blood-soaked conspiracy of Valentine’s Day, driven by the oppressive chocolate capitalists, has arrived once again. In order to create a brighter future, we call for solidarity among our unloved comrades, so that we may demonstrate in resolute opposition to Valentine’s Day and the romantic industrial complex.”
At previous events, leaders of the group have yelled slogans such as “I hope all riyajuus explode! But we’re still a little jealous!” while wearing shirts that say, roughly, “sex is useless.”
The story of the changing American diet over the last 60 years is a story of junk science funded by both government and corporate interests, as well as a cascade of health panics and regulations aimed at one "demon" ingredient after another. The result is an unhealthier, more obese population than the one that ate more dairy and nearly three times as much red meat a century ago.
Eggs may finally be coming off the demon list, but it seems like it's going to be decades more of industry-corrupted science, lobbyist-corrupted government, Olestra-like food substances, obesity and heart diseases, and a whole lot of nonionic surfactants before we figure out that traditional staples like butter and pork fat really are best.
...it’s one of the blackest jokes of history, that the Holocaust enabled the Islamization of Europe and the Islamization of Europe has enabled the destruction of what remains, post-Holocaust, of Jewish life in Europe.
You need to have spare money to run a hobby farm, whether it's vegetables, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Often, such things are set up as tax dodges (agricultural land), never expected to make any meaningful profit themselves.
Photo above - winter Robins taken by a reader. Many Robins and Bluebirds in New England do not migrate, and live on old fruit. Sometimes they get drunk on fermented fruit and berries.
From It’s The End Of Sex As We Know It - Feminism has gone off the deep end, commercializing both sex and women and claiming that their subjugation is instead a demonstration of their power:
Given the Dr. Frankenstein aspects of modern medical technology, Kendall’s biologically mystifying claim, “You don’t have to have a vagina in order to be pregnant,” is true, but a more obvious explanation seems to be that Kendall and a great many of her peers have lost their minds...
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
To get it right, probably should use dried Navy Beans, but the canned would work too. A crock pot item? Why not. It should come out firm, not soupy.
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?
I have seen plenty of towns with thriving downtowns with no malls nearby. Lucky towns. The shopping streets of cities, too, are basically shopping malls without a roof.
The town of Roseto, Pennsylvania, had very low levels of coronary artery disease. The population smoked, ate lots of fat, and mostly worked hard manual jobs. The experts went to study it, and came up with a cultural hypothesis to explain it all.
Tree Sparrow Cardinal Slate-Colored Junco Mockingbird Song Sparrow Blue Jay Downy Woodpecker damn English Sparrows White Throated Sparrow Great Horned Owl (heard early) Mourning Doves Chipping Sparrow Chickadee Carolina Wren
and a new friend, a Brown Thrasher, one of my favorite birds. He's a little early to be here, but using his strong beak to punch holes in the snow to find birdseed.
For the first two years, we were just quietly practicing below the radar until we sort-of defined what we are and how this website thing works. I'm still not sure, though, what we are. In the beginning, we used to post a Tractor of the Week.
We still do some birds and animals, quotes, Sunday Lectionary, Yankee food, gardening, fishing, hunting, conservation, Bob news, and all sorts of random things. We have done so many things over these years - including a friend's Aliyah Diary.
I suppose what we do is whatever we find interesting and whatever we think at least one other person on the planet might find interesting or provocative. Clearly, and to our chagrin, we are not for everybody.
I can say is that we are not "boutique" by choice but purely because of our own limitations of time and talent, and because of free market forces. 1.7 million "hits" per month? What does that really mean? Nothing.
I am grateful to all of our contributors and commenters who have come and gone, or stuck around, over these years. Not to mention friends who send me Morning Links. I think Maggie's has been a wholesome hobby and outlet for all.
Thanks also to all of the other websites we beg, steal, or borrow from. Tons of interesting stuff out there to mine, and we do not always acknowledge it properly. Forgive us. It's a time consideration. We all have day jobs.
We have readers from all over the world - mostly the Anglosphere - Australia, Britain, Canada but lots from northern Europe too - France, Germany, Scandinavia, Poland. Minimal Russia - maybe blocked there. Mostly American and Canuck readership. We are blocked in China (why would they bother?), but we have readers in free China, Hong Kong, and Japan. Israel too. Africa and South America? Zero. I think part of the original concept was to share a version of crusty, rebellious Yankee New England life and attitudes, slice of life, warts and all, with people far away. It's evolved.
We like commenters. Please comment at will on our site. No need to agree with us, but compliments are of course always welcome.
We have plenty of bandwidth for new readers, so, if you get something out of Maggie's - likes or dislikes - please share our existence with others. A growing readership is our emotional reward for this hobby.
A "retired" contributor suggested linking some samples of our stuff from past years. I tried to do that, but it's just too hard, most of the links and images have become obsolete, and, just like Maggie (below), our formatting has been corrupted by age.
The Right is finally coming around to the understanding that what mainly distinguishes it from the Left is not its general preference for muscular foreign policy, its not always convincing defense of the Judeo-Christian tradition, or even its relatively faithful reading of the Constitution, as important as those things are. Rather, the fight between Right and Left is about coercion.
Bingo! It's about freedom.King George's yoke was light indeed compared to our current feds, but I guess our current yoke is more or less voluntary.
Do we really need more roads, highways, and bridges? And if we do, what does the federal government have to do with it? In my humble view, most government infrastructure is a disguised subsidy for somebody or something.
After seven years of political and legal battles that have grown into one of the ugliest environmental fights in the country, this was the end of the line for Lunny’s oyster farm. "It's been a terrible time," said Lunny, who still lives on the nearby cattle ranch where he grew up and where his grandfather started a dairy farm in 1947. The forced closure of the oyster company marks the end, after almost 80 years, of modern shellfish farming in Drakes Estero, the tidal estuary that lies at the center of the dispute...
40:21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
40:22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them like a tent to live in;
40:23 who brings princes to naught, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
40:24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
40:25 To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
40:26 Lift up your eyes on high and see: Who created these? He who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name; because he is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing.
40:27 Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hidden from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?
40:28 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.
40:29 He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless.
40:30 Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted;
40:31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Thanks, David Warren - Good Health May Be Bad for You- for commenting on our short piece. A bit from him about the Yankee spirit:
Through Robert Frost and many predecessors, poetic and other, I recognize strengths and weaknesses in the species. Currently I am focusing on strengths.
There is a certain rough-hewn spirit of independence that goes deeper than any politics, and is expressed with a laconic drollness that cannot be defeated by the world. You could not enslave these people. They would not cooperate.
Cooperate only when we want to.Often, our bias is not to.
We must strive to be multiculturally tolerant and understanding of different views. Anyway, Christians do it too, right? Heck, we behead adulterers, gays, and blasphemers routinely in our church. It's a lot of fun. The masturbators, we bury alive just like the Muslims but we're running out of space for that in the churchyard and are considering using the Town Dump.
St. Valentine's Day 
Come live with me and be my love, 
Nobody told these people that they were creating a hobby farm, not a real business: 
Tractors 
I was raised on these things. In winter, baked beans with hot dogs and toast. Ketchup on the side as the vegetable. I still like that old, filling, Yankee poverty food.
Most writers have written disparagingly about shopping malls. It is easy to do. People like to say that they would prefer the old (now, half-abandoned) Main St. with its old, familiar, family-owned shops - but would they really?
We're ten years old today. Happy Birthday to us.
The Oyster Shell Game:
The Snow Man